After a cup of coffee, let’s talk about the first part of the "survival trilogy" released by Swedish director Roy Andersson (Roy Andersson) in 2000-"Singing from the Second Floor". The production of the film lasted four years (1996.3-2000.5). It is an absurd comedy composed of long shots and won the Jury Prize, the main competition unit of the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival. At the same time, this is also the third feature film of the genius director Roy Anderson's film career released after 25 years of "Swedish Love Story" and "Hotel Weird". With this film, he successfully consolidated his unique and distinctive "Anderson-like" movie style.
The film uses 46 long shots to pave the audience into Anderson's perspective and critique of the intricate problems of Swedish capitalist society at the dawn of the new era. Unemployment, foreign discrimination, indifferent communities, inadequate magic, lingering marriages, businessmen who have lost money by arson and insurance, cities with traffic paralysis, fragile love, rabble of strikes, incompatibility between poetry and reality, and old age The decline of socialization, religious beliefs, and the Great Depression of the economy. All these problems have confined people in the garbage dump under the clouds. Anderson also covered the audience tightly with a blanket of absurd comedy emotions, tore the reality to us, and then whispered repeatedly in our ears. Yes, we are here, the world is ridiculous, and life is really painful. Defining it as an absurd comedy is actually the collapse of human nature splattered everywhere. Some people say that they have seen the extreme mourning and desperate fear, and they have also seen the pessimism that succumbed to fate. It can not be regarded as a comedy. But how clever Anderson is, the black humor is extraordinary in the film, which is extremely distorted and sharp to the audience. But the pain that can be endured did not cause real harm. At the same time, it can continue to move forward and prescribe an antidote to the pessimism and disappointment, that is, the person who sits is cute, and all of the sorrows suddenly become revelation and thinking of salvation.
Roy Anderson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1943. He graduated from the Swedish Film Academy and studied under Ingmar Bergman, who was the god of film history. He often challenged him secretly but had to say that he inherited his philosophical direction. That is, thinking about existence, analyzing death, time, illusion and dreams, but Bergman is more solemn, and Anderson often presents a sense of absurdity full of scorn. When film masters become masters, they must dabble in a wide range of arts, and first become all-round talents in art. However, the two are similar. They both start from various Western modernist philosophies and combine painting, music, and philosophies. Classical works of art, such as literature, use film to output their thinking. The production of films is naturally different from Shuang films, and also from most so-called commercial films, and because of this, it prevents it from becoming a pastime entertainment film full of sensory stimulation, desire and irregular games, and worthy of audiences. Opened solemnly like a book. In the style of surrealism (English] surréalisme [法]), this film combines the concept of reality with life impulses, subconsciousness, dreams and illusions in an attempt to return to some rational topics. The so-called surrealism is the desire to resolve the conflict between dreams and reality and achieve an absolute reality. Its philosophical origin is the "intuition and life impulse" proposed by Bergson (intuition is a direct Consciousness is the duration of the self; the impulse of life is the continuous effort to create in a stretch of time) and Freud's psychoanalytic theory (consciousness is isolated, unconsciousness is the essence; dreams and psychosis are phenomena that the subconsciousness cannot be satisfied. And the subconscious is magical), and Hegel's "dialectics" (thought is moving, existence and non-existence are the same, contradiction promotes development). Anderson mixed it all in this surrealist style film, pulling the audience back from the ridiculous plot structure of contradictions and conflicts and even believing in this metaphysical absolute truth, telling us, yes, these all exist and we should also Think about it. At the same time, the surrealist setting rationally broke the time barrier of the film and blurred the continuity of time.
Anderson also mentioned that the creation of this film was influenced by the aesthetics of Peter Bruegel (1525-1569) , a peasant painter from the Netherlands during the Renaissance. In addition to sometimes having fantastic fantasy beyond reality, such as " The Census of Bethlehem puts biblical characters in the contemporary environment, and the struggle and conflicts between the holy angels representing goodness and justice and the rebellious angels representing destruction and sin in The Fall of Rebel Angels.
Most of the time, he also painted ridiculously ridiculously ridiculously struggling people in the market. The tone of this film also refers to the composition style of Old Peter's "Hunter in the Snow". The painting looks at the busy social animals from the angle of four crows, using black and white tones to shape everything, making people feel cold and transparent. Anderson, who was born in advertising, also made good use of old Peter's artistic techniques, using low-contrast and cool black, white, gray, and green dark tones to make the image more concise and cold. In terms of styling, Anderson also admitted that he took the inspiration of the masks in Japanese Noh dramas, turning all his characters into white-faced clowns, which are more representative of the general public, and at the same time reflect the hopelessness of the dead in the apocalypse. The insensitive and unkind faces of all living beings in the world.
One of the special skills of this film lies in the use of a fixed long lens and the unity of composition. Anderson, who has obsessive-compulsive disorder, sets the entire film's shots except for a moving lens and two relatively moving lenses, and the rest are set to a fixed deep focus wide-angle long lens, allowing the audience to pay attention to the scenes in the scene like watching a stage play. Every move, like an outsider who opens up the perspective of God, examines these occurrences calmly and objectively. He also made the picture as clean and concise as possible, and never appeared irrelevant people and things. From this point of view, Anderson, who was born in advertising, knows how to convey what he wants to convey to the audience, so that the audience can be immersed in it without distraction. Anderson unified the composition of the film to the point that even if the scenes are constantly switched, there is not much stimulating and fresh visual perception. I have to say that this film is still an obscure book. It takes patience to watch repeatedly to experience the various symbols and symbols. metaphor. Its non-linear narrative method allows the constantly jumping and switching story scenes to be rationally explained, and the plot does not need to emphasize its integrity. It only stretches and unfolds as desired. At the same time, Anderson also uses the counter-aligning technique of montage to highlight It has a sense of absurdity and coldness against the plot. The language and music of this film are not much, the lines are simple and there are many repetitions. While repeatedly tapping people's hearts, it also makes people want to expand their meaning and arouse thinking at any time. At the same time, the insertion of music, in addition to the symphonic string music when necessary, highlights the burst and progression of its emotions. The contrast with the church music that deliberately appears in the extreme absurd scene of the decline of faith is even more absurd, such as sacrificing a little girl. Anna, and the sorrows and chorus of people around in the hallucinations Keller produced on the subway are also the superposition of their emotional expressions. In the current words, when you are sad and depressed, the world is crying and screaming for you. On the other hand, don't listen to slow songs for sad people, this kind of self-centered pain is also exaggerated.
The following involves serious spoilers, read carefully
In the previous paragraphs, various social issues that Anderson wanted to embody were flashed out. At the beginning of the film, I used the lens of Piller, a businessman who wants to buy a new golf course, to point out the overall time background and general issues-what's the point of living in unlucky places. Significance, and at the same time elicits the subsequent thinking of all parties.
Lass, who had been doing it for 23 years, was exquisitely dressed and fired after going to work. He had to hug his boss' thighs and begged him to keep him in humiliation. Before going out, his partner was still repeating "Everything has a variable." It was a blow into the abyss.
Outsiders came to the building to find someone from upstairs to downstairs and no one responded until they walked to the road when a group of xenophobic young men stabbed him to the ground, but the bystanders were so indifferent that no one came forward to help. The alienation of interpersonal relationships is evident.
The magician performed magic tricks, and the magic was so bad that it broke the volunteers on the spot; when he went to the hospital, the doctors and nurses who treated the volunteers had an extramarital affairs. The doctors indifferently ate hamburgers and read books in their spare time. The third nurse sobbed and asked when he was divorced. People can't help but ask questions, what is going on in society, what is going on in marriage?
Afterwards, Kahler, who played the most role in the scene, appeared, tentatively regarded as a main clue. He had just set fire to destroy his old furniture store just to defraud him. At that time, he thought that someone would come to the rescue if he could see it, but he never thought that he would really burn it to ashes and cause trouble. He still has his eldest son who wrote poetry until he lost his mind and went to a mental hospital. People still think that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Everything is terrible. Traffic jams on the main road outside the store, and people are constantly on strike for the bad state of the stock market. On the street corner in the distance, the old man scavengers and the outcast who lost love calmly talked, and once again pointed out the absurdity of this sluggish society.
Then the camera turned back to Kahler. He went to the church to find the priest to educate him, wanting to ask what was going on. The priest, who was deeply affected by the real estate economic bubble, and another clergyman who went bankrupt in stocks were frustrated. Who is not? And Kahler actually comforted the clergy with the brainwashing of the eldest son who hated him and muttered "The seated person is cute". It's so nonsense.
Speaking of a scene in the congested community on the main road: a navy subordinate went to the nursing home of the centenarian commander in a taxi driven by Kahler’s second son to celebrate his birthday. In fact, he was only writing speeches and working in his place. Simple repetition has sanctified its philosophy and deceived itself, but through the words of the two people, it is to point out that our society is conservative and moving forward, but it is very slow.
The picture cuts to a nursing home. The centenary general and the commander-in-chief are locked in a crib surrounded by all sides. The subordinates come to offer congratulations but they seem to be offering sacrifices to the tablet. The old general’s gestures showed that he was probably the Nazi of that year. In any case, even such a cruel man, he would look like a torn clothes hung on a crutches when he was old. In the middle of the night, he could only call out to help me desperately for help. Signal, this has to be said to be a serious problem of aging. The economy is rotten, is there any stimulus policy? Yes, the World Expo has been held. Is it exciting? Anyway, the economic situation of the characters in the story is still the same. Kahler’s old friends started selling crosses, thinking that people would definitely be able to rely on faith in bad times, but who would have expected that the new era faith was lost and he failed after all. At this point in the story, a large number of illusions were added in the second half of the story, and a journey of extreme absurdity began. At the station, Kahler really encountered a finger-trapped person who was still laughing about how he might have encountered before, and then he hallucinated that the former creditor who had committed suicide appeared and was hanged by the Nazi. The obsessive Russian brother who apologized. On the Economic Council, the funny and nonsensical scene of riots caused by the moving house on the opposite side. I don't know when and where, people choose the saint girl Anna to make a ridiculous sacrifice.
When all the absurdity rises to the extreme, life becomes a mess. Anderson immediately used the eldest sons of Piller and Keller to soothe people's hearts. Calm down! Calm down! Everything has a time limit, including pain. What's wrong with hard work? So keep working hard; what's wrong with writing poems? So continue to live poetically; what's wrong with faith? So continue to believe and be a good person.
The final scene is fixed in the garbage dump where the cross is discarded. The original idea of earning a living has defeated faith. All the victims flocked to him. Kahler is still emphasizing that life is just to eat and drink, or even more. better. So what is this good desire that is difficult to fill? Anderson once again threw the question to the audience.
Throughout the whole film, it shows a bustling and profitable social herd, full of absurdity and pain everywhere, human hearts are ancient and insensitive, human nature is intertwined with dreams and illusions in these scenes, just as Nietzsche said, It seems too human. All the absurdity manifests a great sense of powerlessness, and the only sober ones are the patients in the mental hospital, or the singing from the second floor, telling the floating and sinking creatures on the first floor that it is good to have faith, and it is poetic. It is also good to live on the ground. Reflecting today, life is often just like chicken feathers. Back to the present, 20 years after the movie was released, this global pandemic has endangered all walks of life, and people have begun to fear the future. Some time ago, not only a friend asked me, what do you think about the economy, what about the job market, what about education, what about society, what about life... We bear the duality of our hearts and the outside world. Torture, what can I do? I think it seems that Anderson has found part of the answer: the seater is cute.
(Author's public account: close your ears and remember slowly)
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